The Sound Sacrifice
We know by tradition that the legendary Ostanes witnessed in the supreme opening of the philosophical egg, and allegedly to a successful “little Genesis”. For this reason he was honored with the title of “sovereign of the seven sounds”.
Heinrich Khunrath was one of the few thinkers that Alchemy has ever had, so much so that the publication of his Amphiteatrum Sapientiae Aeternae in 1595 marked a watershed. A rare alchemist who sought the “middle world”, which perhaps it would be better to call the “means to the world”. Khunrath defined this secret as the “glue” of the world, which, like all adhesives, formed a bridge between two opposite and distant banks, between which a river flowed. A glue, that of Khunrath, which, if officially, could be read about optical science, between the lines had to be interpreted in the alchemical sense of “light that is heard with the ears”.
However, to the frustration of our instinct for conquest, this adhesive bridge cannot be crossed: the waters of this numerical river are too reckless and abysmal. Ancient rituals required that we stop at our bank and wait for someone to appear on the other side; only then could that strange being come to meet us and help us cross the bridge. Without an answer to the song of our philosophical egg in the Last Cooking, our musical scale had become only a very short jingle.
Khunrath tells us that if someone had not called the Philosophers’ Stone a stone, no one would have called it a stone in later times. Then it occurs to me that canto in Venetian means chant as well as cornerstone, the stone on which palaces are built.
Like the last year, the first sound – very likely a C (do) – has made itself perceived very soon, one hour and thirty-two after the beginning… The second whistle – which gave the impression to be a D (re) – arrived just 24 hours later, yesterday, at 10 and 10 p.m., while the weight slightly increased and reached at the same time 333.65 grams, namely – and that’s amazing – the same increase proportion when the temperature was at 340 degrees Celsius…
Eugène Canseliet (L’Alchimie Expliqueé sur ses Textes Classiques) – Canseliet, the Art of Music & Weight
“Septem Discrimina Vocum” (1). Virgil describes the “sound sacrifice” with this elegant and architectural sentence.
So Orpheus rhythmically accompanies the scale of seven simple sounds of the lyre through Septem Discrimina Vocum, i.e. alternating the voice to the plucking of the comb seven times – Virgil writes exactly comb and not plectrum as if it were a matter of combing long hair, not just plucking strings. It may seem banal, but these are the only instructions left. Of course, we know that the instrumental lyre was built by Hermes/Mercury with pieces of living animals and given to Apollo – the only one who could play it – through Aphrodite. If we continued to add more Olympian deities since they are all involved, we would arrive at the perfect confusion, the one that generates rejection.
I remember that the immediate feelings from my first alchemical works was of being in front of a “private communication channel”. However, like a river, it surely does not move on a single current. Later, mythology explained to me that the ineffable river is shaken at its origin and cannot be changed by us humans. And, sure, numbers make the difference between a puddle and an ocean. That is the rhythm.
The musicologist Marius Schneider wrote a fundamental book in 1960: The Primitive Music. A work that perhaps only an alchemist can appreciate, and understand, in depth.
The Primitive Music by Marius Schneider
2 Some Sounds create World and Humankind
3 a Chant & a Counter Chant Give Rise to Humankind
4 Acoustic Nature of Bonds between Gods and Men
5 Through Music, Humankind Imitates the Gods
7 Only Music Makes Ceremonies Effective
8 the Artistic Music Magical Root
- Nec non Threicius longa cum veste sacerdos (Orpheus) obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum, iamque eadem digitis, iam pectine pulsat eburno. And the Thracian priest in a sumptuous garment / sings a scale of seven simple sounds rhythmically/ now plucking with his fingers, now with the ivory comb – Publius Virgilius Maro, Aeneis, VI, 645-647.
- The three images from Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, are in Hamburg 1595 edition.